Dear Jacinda: We Haven’t Got Any More Time

On
Monday, the Prime Minister accepted a petition calling for
the end to oil and gas exploration signed by 45,000 people.
In response to this, the Prime Minister asked for “a bit
more time” to make a decision about the future of oil and
gas. Later she clarified her position and did so again in a
Facebook Live post last night: the government was
considering what to do about the “block offer” process
which would take some time. This is a decision about future
oil and gas exploration.

She was unequivocal, however,
that any existing permits would continue for their
contractual lifespan. The Prime Minister estimated that
there were roughly 21 of these permits, and they cover an
area in excess of 40,000 square kilometres both on-shore and
off.

Yet her position is somewhat confused; oil
exploration permits are just that - permits for exploration,
not subsequent drilling. The block offer is really about the
oil industry’s need to have “proven reserves” to keep
their shareholders happy. Existing permits for exploration
are not the same as existing permits for actual
extraction.

The PM was at pains to reassure the industry
that her government didn’t want to do anything
“jarring,” because there were lots of people who counted
on the industry. Yet the much of the equipment for offshore
exploration (specifically seismic surveying) is not local
gear: these are highly specialised vessels, such as the
“Amazon Warrior” that sail around the world conducting
this work. So exploration isn’t really an employment
issue.

But more to the point, the call for New Zealanders
to wait on urgent climate decisions against the needs of the
oil industry to avoid “jarring” is seriously misplaced.
This year, we have already had the hottest summer on record.
We have had disastrous cyclones hit the West Coast and
repeated flooding across the Coromandel and Bay of Plenty.
We have massive slips and communities cut off. This is the
“jarring” we are already experiencing; and they climate
effects we are already paying for. People’s homes,
livelihoods and even lives have already been lost.

The
government is definitely between a rock and a hard place:
the serious and dramatic action needed on climate change
means taking on the world’s biggest and most powerful
industry. It is an attack on the engine of capitalism. Yet
that is precisely what is necessary in order for us as a
civilisation to survive. We can’t change without change.
Yet those who continue to profit from climate change, the
oil producers, are not going to allow any change that
affects their bottom line, and in doing so, they are only
following the best practice rules of our existing economic
system.

There are dire economic predictions that
accompany any discussion of serious cuts to carbon
emissions. Yet the economic situation we face by continuing
business-as-usual is even more bleak: insecurity, precarity
and inequality. This is quite aside from the environmental
and social breakdown we are staring down by pursuing the
status quo.

The best hopes we have at this stage are to
build an uncompromising climate justice movement, and to
build local community resilience. Next week, there will be a
non-violent blockade of the annual petroleum summit by
climate activists from around the country. Irrespective of
what Jacinda decides, we need to work to dismantle the oil
and gas industry directly. And in the process, we need to
give this government the courage to take the steps that are
urgently required.

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